Microsoft has stated that customers will be able to downgrade all the way back …

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Microsoft has announced this week that it will continue to offer downgrade options to both volume licensing customers and end-users when Windows 7 ships. Customers who purchase a system from a qualifying OEM with a version of Windows 7 that they don't want will be able to fall back to equivalent versions of Vista or XP. This latest extension to XP's availability has, inevitably, made the headlines, as if Microsoft's decision to allow users to fall back to the venerable system is a judgment of Windows 7 before it even ships.

The announcement does not, however, represent any great shift in licensing policy. Volume license customers have long had the ability to use their licenses for any prior equivalent version of Windows—in principle allowing an organization to continue to install NT 4 or even Windows 95 if it preferred—and the continuation of this policy with Windows 7 is just business as usual.

This "business as usual" position was reinforced by Microsoft. Redmond dismissed any attempt to position Windows XP downgrades as a hedge bet against Windows 7 uptake failure as spurious. When asked to clarify the situation by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, the Microsoft representative emphasized that this capability was nothing new. "This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor and our volume-license customers can always downgrade to any previous version of Windows," said the spokesperson.

OEMs will also continue to offer end users the ability to downgrade their Windows 7 systems for a limited time. Again, this is not unusual in and of itself; such downgrades were available for Vista (to XP) and XP (to Windows 2000) in the past, again for limited periods, at least for customers buying the business-oriented versions. Although the lukewarm reception that Vista received among business users and the development of the netbook market led to regular extensions of that "limited period", Microsoft's intent, at least, was for there to be a brief transition during which Vista and XP were sold side-by-side, after which Vista would take over.

Windows 7's downgrade rights may be a little different to those of its predecessor, however; indications are that XP downgrades will continue to be possible, even for non-volume license customers. Given that Windows 7 is in many ways a relatively minor refresh to Windows Vista, this is perhaps unsurprising. When it comes to software and hardware compatibility, Vista and Windows 7 are all but identical, and so switching from Vista to Windows 7 is unlikely to cause businesses any problems. As such, a downgrade option that only permitted downgrading to Vista would have little benefit. Migration from XP is the scenario liable to raise compatibility issues, and so it will continue to be the case that XP-using businesses will want to stick with XP on new systems.

All in all, though, the Windows 7 downgrade story will be much the same as the Vista story. The most surprising thing about this announcement is that people are even surprised by it; the continued availability of XP downgrades is not an indictment of Windows 7, but rather a continuation (in spirit) of Microsoft's conservative, business-friendly stance on new OS releases. As much as Redmond would like all its customers to switch to the latest-and-greatest on release day, the company recognizes that the wheels of business turn slowly, and that sometimes a little more time is needed.